What is an 'Eco Brick'? The zero-waste building material anyone can make
We are in the process of creating an Eco Brick wall in the Tierra & Lava garden. It’s the perfect zero-waste alternative to traditional building materials!
Eco Bricks are your run-of-the-mill plastic bottles packed full with other clean, dry, non-recyclable plastics such as candy wrappers or styrofoam. Once they’re packed full, they can be stacked on top of each other like traditional bricks and sealed with concrete, clay cob, or whatever building material is available in the area.
The beauty of Eco Bricks is multi-faceted: they’re made entirely of materials you likely already have and consume or can find for free, they help alleviate trash in landfills, and help prevent toxins and microplastics leaking into the environment.
You can make Eco Brick houses, sheds, walls, or pretty much anything you can dream up. Creative license aside, there are some rules you’ll have to adhere to in order to build safe, lasting structures. Ecobricks.org along with YouTube will be your best friend if you are serious about giving Eco Bricks a shot for your next DIY project. Some things to consider are the following:
What kind of plastic bottle you’re using. You need to use PET plastic bottles, which is typically the most commonly available type of bottle. You’ll just want to make sure that whatever shape/ sized bottle you choose, you consistently use it, lest your wall be uneven.
How full the bottle is. In order to stand any pressure, the bottles need to be packed full (and it may be harder than you think). Using a stick or tool to compact the trash inside the bottle, you’ll need to make sure no air pockets exist and the bottle needs to reach a certain weight in order for it to be usable. Despite the materials being actual trash, there are still high building standards that need to be maintained.
How clean your trash is. A vital step in the brick making process is cleaning off your trash that you’re compacting in the bottles. There can’t be any dampness or food on anything otherwise gases could build up and explode the bottle, rendering your structure unsound.
What you’re using to seal the Eco Bricks. There are certain considerations to take in when thinking about which material to fill in-between the bricks, such as what is most available to you or how it will mold to the bottles. There are also a number of methods of crafting Eco Brick ‘modules’ - find them on ecobricks.org here.
Example of fully packed ecobricks. Photo courtesy of ecobricks.org.
Eco Bricks of course aren’t the end-all-be-all solution to pollution. After all, it is much better to never consume plastic than to consume it (even if you’re recycling it into cool structures). But we understand that sometimes it is next to impossible to avoid producing non-recyclable trash, so we commend getting creative to avoid landfill waste. Here at Tierra & Lava, we use Eco Bricks as well as recycled tires to build walls around our garden, as we are committed to operating as a zero waste company.
Eco Brick wall in progress at the Tierra & Lava garden.